Hotep! BDPA Education & Technology Foundation (BETF) exists to provide financial support for BDPA. We share information about fundraising, funding sources and BDPA programs on this blog. The postings on this site are my own and don’t necessarily represent BDPA’s positions, strategies or opinions.

Saturday, December 4, 2010

BDPA Students: HTML 1, Learn the Basics (Zack Garbow)

Zack Garbow would be in the BDPA Hall of Fame if we had such a thing. He is the long-time coordinator of the high school computer competition (HSCC) program hosted by our BDPA Southern Minnesota chapter. BDPA Southern Minnesota has won more national HSCC championships than any other chapter in the nation. BDPA Southern Minnesota chapter has won 5 of the past 6 national championships (2005, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010)

Zack feels that building a strong HSCC program begins with the basics. Here is lesson that he uses to teach HTML basics to his students in Rochester, MN.

I look forward to seeing other HSCC tutorials being placed online! One BDPA!

9 comments:

I love your concept of "One BDPA". This year I'm releasing our custom teaching software, bdpastudents.com, to any other chapters who are interested, hosted and supported free of charge. The idea is that we can then have a single resource library where all chapters can share assignments, teaching documents, and videos and really raise the level of resources collectively.

Zack - I rec'd some pushback from a chapter HSCC coordinator today. He wrote, "... I think you know the “Southern Minnesota Story” 50K + budget; High School Students taking computer science courses during the Semester; A cadre of technical professional teaching each Saturday; Talented committed students..."

How would you respond to a BDPA chapter that indicates SMN has some built-in advantages?

@Villager, we are definitely fortunate in SMN to have resources and dedicated volunteers. But I'm familiar with the "Southern MN Story" because I've been a part of it.

It wasn't long ago that we only had 8 kids attend class, we were getting 10th place in the national competition, and we did not receive HS credit for our course. (And for the record, computer science is not taught in our area high schools). Heck, I didn't even know PHP or MySQL before I started teaching it!

The way we've built up our chapter is by aggressively recruiting volunteers, working diligently with the schools to attain the HS credit for our class, and putting in countless hours to put in place a repeatable process and curriculum. That has resulted in our annual student attendance jumping from 10 students in 2005 to 60 students today.

This did not all happen by accident. As much as I'd to claim otherwise, folks (volunteers & students) in MN are not any smarter than elsewhere. I wish it were that easy, because then I could reclaim 10-20 hours per week of my life!

Through hard work, we've built up a level of success for our chapter, and as we all know, success breeds success. That is why we are actively sharing the resources, curriculum, and software we have developed so other chapters can utilize what we have already created, allowing all chapters can share their knowledge and experience. This raises the bar for everyone, and in the end, greatly benefits the students. That's "One BDPA."

Zack, im literally affected by your personal telling of the story. That is amazing, inspiring and beautifully symbolic of the ability that every chapter has regardless of where they begin. The unselfish willingness to share the same resources to make it possible for us to benefit from that is a big deal. Thank you.

I am in the midst of curriculum planning and interested in seeing what you have put together to see how it may fit in with our training period. What is the best way for a trainer to get a good idea of what you have put together? (ill check the site out). Best.

Temitope - Were you and Zack able to connect? I'm not certain if he gets notified of these follow-up comments. Send me an email (wayne.hicks@betf.org) if you want me to get you connected directly with him.

In meantime, I wish you well in your planning for the LA chapter youth education program. Perhaps we will see some of your curriculum make its way to YouTube this year! :)

BDPA Video Bar

Loading...

About BETF

The BDPA Education & Technology Foundation (BETF) was created in 1992 to provide major financial support of the education & technology programs of National BDPA and its local chapters. We fund BDPA's Student Information Technology & Scholarship (SITES) program as well as the BDPA IT Institute.